Encountering, Through Photos, the Great Diversity of the San Francisco Bay Area
Singular images far from Silicon Valley and intimate moments beyond most Facebook feeds
Status Update is a series of multi-platform exhibitions curated and produced by Catchlight around specific social issues. The first edition looks at visualizations of inequality and resilience in our own San Francisco Bay Area.
This is the intro essay in a four part series. View Vol 1: Home, Vol 2: Place + Purpose and Vol 3: Opportunity.
Few people have a grasp on life in the San Francisco Bay Area like journalist and activist Raj Jayadev, coordinator of Silicon Valley De-Bug. Catchlight asked Jayadev to pen a foreword “Bay Centric” for Status Update Bay Area, its multi-platform exhibition of current documentary photo and video from the region.
Bay Centric
by Raj Jayadev
THE BAY AREA is not a region, it’s a universe. It contains communities that are as different from and unknown to one another as planets are in our solar system. Some parts of the Bay burn bright and hot like the sun with opportunity and possibility. Other areas can be cold, depleted of economic atmospheres that can sustain life, and indeed may choke the breath right out of you. The planet you experience the Bay Area from just depends on which exit you take off the 101. And please believe they all have their own gravitational pull.
To represent the Bay Area’s diversity as one experience is impossible. Even the framework of a commonly used binary — the haves and the have-nots — is not enough. That concept, though true, is born from our current impulse to process quickly and prevents us from really sitting with the full complexities that exist here.
It could be that the only way to really understand our communities is to look into Bay Area lives from a multitude of singular, intimate moments.
This is what Status Update does. The poetic images collected here introduce us to the unique peoples of the Bay Area. They call me to ask: Is there really a connectivity that binds us? If so, what? Are we colliding or splintering further? As a Bay Arean, who am I beholden to?
Individual photographs incite as many questions as truths they tell. Do those students in East San Jose expect to be in the Bay Area in five years? Do they dream of leaving or staying? What do they talk about in that barbershop? When you get out of jail in San Francisco, where do you go? I wonder what the man who sleeps on the 22 Bus would say at that tech mixer in San Francisco.
AS SOMEONE who lives in the Bay Area, the faces and issues presented in this work are not totally unfamiliar. I’ve seen the homeless tents in San Jose bulldozed by city of officials, conducted writing workshops at the school struggling in the shadows of Silicon Valley, marched with protesters against police shootings and the building of jails.
The collective impact of the stories in Status Update calls for more than being familiar with — or acknowledging — inequality, injustice and difference in the Bay Area. That is the wink and nod of the title. What if our discussion of the varied realities of the Bay Area extended beyond the confines of comment boxes and hashtags, and the thirty seconds of attention we give each other?
What if our discussion of the varied realities of the Bay Area extended beyond the confines of comment boxes and hashtags?
What happens when we really see each others’ stories through the lenses of incredibly talented artists? What happens when we’re allowed an opportunity to collectively navigate what our destinies may be and how they might be contingent upon one another? I don’t know what the result of such an experiment would be, but Status Update is an invitation to commune, view, learn, reflect, and possibly, act toward making it a reality.
See more photo stories > http://www.catchlight.io/
Raj Jayadev is the coordinator of Silicon Valley De-Bug. His essay is republished from the Status Update Bay Area exhibition catalog (Catchlight, 2015).
Based in Berkeley, California, Catchlight helps committed photographers and visual storytellers find their voice and master ways to help you hear it. We support the creation of innovative new documentary work, and produce unique ancillary material toward an enhanced viewer experience. Catchlight partners with media organizations, shares stories through traditional and contemporary platforms and organizes live and virtual events connecting visual storytellers to their audiences for more intimate and meaningful exchanges.
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